Tappin' Maples
by benignmilitancy
Summary: "Good evening, gentlemen," said Tim, large and looming in the burning white parking lot lights. Behind him, Angela smirked. Dally smiled a little too widely at her figure in the distance, wishing with every fatal intent she were hit by a speeding bus.
1. Tappin' Maples

_Disclaimer: I don't own The Outsiders._

_Title__:_ "_Tappin' Maples"_

_Rating: T_

_Summary: "Good evening, gentlemen," said Tim, large and looming in the burning white parking lot lights. Behind him, Angela smirked. Dally smiled a little too widely at her figure in the distance, wishing with every fatal intent she were hit by a speeding bus._

_A/N: My version of what happened when Dally slashed Tim's tires. The characters are all one year older. Also includes Two-Bit! =D_

* * *

><p>"What are we doing?" asked Two-Bit. He couldn't see clearly in the night haze. "Dally."<p>

"What?"

"I said—what are we doing here?"

"Gonna rob a fucking bank, Al Capone," Dally said. "What do you think we're doing?"

Two-Bit folded his arms.

"You slashed Tim's tires, didn't ya?" he sighed. "And now you wanna get the priceless look on his face when he sees it."

"Kodak moment," confirmed Dally, dipping his head down in the shadows.

"Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to another exciting match tonight at The Random-Ass Parking Lot in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma!" announced Two-Bit, suddenly drawing on the car's dice as a drop-down microphone. "In this corner, weighing one hundred and sixty-five pounds, two hundred and sixty-five when he's pissin' bourbon at Merril's, he's the gangster piece of New York shit we all love to hate, Dallas the Dumbshit!" He glanced at Dally. "And in this corner, weighing one hundred forty-fi—"

Dally landed a drive right to the stomach and Two-Bit was down.

"P—penalty," he staggered.

"It's called a no-holds-barred match," whispered Dally, and with that hit him straight in the groin, "you ignorant motherfucker."

After the sting subsided, Two-Bit looked up.

"Dally—" he began.

"Shut it."

"Somethin' wicked this way comes, my man," he warned.

"I said shut it!"

"Enemy breach at twelve," Two-Bit said, pointing out to the stretch of pavement ahead.

They looked out the window and saw a girl, standing akimbo and clad in denim. The small white creature walked slowly, gliding through the night and stopping right in front of the hood. There it announced in a deathly shrill: "What'rya doing this time, Winston? Out harassing people you shouldn't?"

Dally stuck his head out the window. "No time to be talkin', Angela. Tim's coming and he's gonna be so fucking pissed he'll slay you the minute he sees you. Get in the car so he won't see you."

Angela glanced at the nails on her left hand.

"No," she said.

"I ain't asking you," Dally said. "I'm telling you. Get in the car."

"My, oh, my! How on Earth did _these_ ever get here?" she smiled, dangling Dally's keys on her index finger.

Dally's eyes narrowed.

In a flash of whip-lashed denim she took them and flung them atop Tim's hood.

"Fuck you," he spat.

She smiled.

"You know he hot-wired this thing," said Two-Bit.

Dally nearly pounded his palm against the horn, but stopped himself at the last minute. "Get in the car _now_, you little bitch-fuck!"

"Maybe I'll just stand here, or maybe I'll move—but that all depends what you're willin' to pay me. What do I get out of all this, Winston?" she said.

"This, you cunt," Dally said.

He slammed his foot all the way down on the gas, jerking the car forward with such a start it pushed Two-Bit all the way back into the cavity of his seat, black rubber whipping the pavement with a sudden scream; but Angela leaned forward and put her elbows down on the hood, cupping her face in her palms and smiling up at him through half-lidded eyes.

"Going soft," she murmured. "How fucking sweet."

"Get in this goddamn car or I'm running your ass over right now!" Dally roared.

"Naughty, naughty, grease," she said. "Lucky for you, Tim's feeling generous today. Play nice and maybe he won't strangle you with your own intestines. Play nicer and maybe you'll only get one beatin' with the door he rips off your car. Beg and maybe he won't use your eyelids as lampshades."

Just as her voice dissolved in the wind, another voice filled the air: "_My tires!_"

"And it's three," she said, holding up a trio of fingers.

The veins in Dally's neck stood out white.

"_My tires!_" Tim screamed. _"What the hell happened to my tires?" _

"Jesus H. Christ, Dally, just run her ass over!" Two-Bit shrilled.

"...two," she said, flashing the peace sign.

Turning around, Tim picked up the keys that Angela had thrown atop the hood. _"What the shit is this?_"

"Angela, I'm not gonna tell you again, get in the—"

Angela said nothing, only smirked dreamily from behind the dashboard glass.

"_SON OF A_ _BITCH!" _Tim exploded.

"ANGELA! GET IN THE FUCKING—"

And Two-Bit ducked beneath the hordes of screams, clapping his palms over his ears.

"...one," she said, grinning as she revealed her middle finger.

"_WINSTON, YOU JACKASS!_"

"Houston to Dallas: we have liftoff," Angela said.

* * *

><p>"Good evening, gentlemen," said Tim, large and looming in the burning white parking lot lights. Behind him, Angela smirked. Dally smiled a little too widely at her figure in the distance, wishing with every fatal intent she were hit by a speeding bus.<p>

"Good evening, sir," Dally nodded. He could feel Tim's breath melt the welding.

"Would you mind telling me why you wise-asses just slashed my tires?" said the brute sweetly.

Dally shrugged, still smiling.

Tim flared his nostrils. "Then whose keys are these?"

He threw them down in Dally's lap. Dally picked them up and studied them curiously, offering them to Two-Bit. Two-Bit, wide-eyed, also shrugged.

Fumbling around in his back pocket, he produced an extra set of keys, jingling them in front of Tim's fuming face. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Tim." He pointed to the back seat. "We just went for a beer run."

Tim's eyes narrowed.

"Not all of us are dicks, you know," added Two-Bit.

"Yeah—" Tim said, purporting his own wise conclusions, "some of you are cunts."

Dally had never flashed a smile so bright as when he saw that look of damnation rising on Angela Shepard's face as she was dragged down the street.

* * *

><p>"So," said Two-Bit, "it was your evil plan all this time."<p>

"Angie's diabolical," said Dally. "But she should know better than to mess with the fucking devil." Turning around, he held out his hand. "Pass me one."

Snapping open a keg, Two-Bit pulled back the cap and handed the bubbling elixir over to Dally. "So why'd you slash Tim's tires anyway?"

"Bored," he stated.

"Always good t' have a half-assed excuse," said Two-Bit sagely, taking a drink for himself.

Dally swallowed the last of the can's contents, crushed it against the dashboard and threw it out the window. "Shut the hell up and pass me 'nother 'un."

As he reached over the back seat, Dally noticed a slip of paper fall out of his back pocket and flutter to the floor. It was worn, crumpled and sat on, but, strangely enough, it was as white as any other fresh piece of paper.

He squinted; apparently the owner had never bothered to look at it.

"What's that?"

Two-Bit bent down. He held the draft notice in front of him. Without a hint of mirth on his face ripped it in two with a clean _rrruuup,_ tossing it out the window and into the eternal night.

"Nothin'," he said.

Dally lifted an indifferent eyebrow and flipped out his lighter. "They'll slam you for that, you know."

"More important things to do than cappin' Japs."

"It's Nam, man, not Japan. God damn, you're stupid," Dally said. "No wonder they kept you back all those years. I bet you can't even operate a fucking loaf of bread without havin' to read the manual first."

"Bull fuckin' shit," replied Two-Bit miserably.

"You know it's true. You're just not cut out for that kinda stuff. You'd be blowin' up whole towns just to watch 'em go boom. Pretty fireworks, ain't it? I'm scared for those motherfuckers already."

"Shut up."

"What? Too sloshed to think of anything clever?"

"Nah," he said. "Not this, man."

And they sat the next five minutes in the silence of passing yellow headlights.

"You got a notice," Two-Bit said. "Didn't you?"

Silence met him.

"Didn't you?"

"Fuckin' set it on fire the first chance I got," Dally muttered. "Let's go."

The car started down the road, but halted. It started and halted, started and halted, started and halted, the driver inside uttering an incoherent string of oaths as he shifted gears into neutral. Two-Bit knew it was bad when Dally began to mistake the brakes for the gas.

"We could go together," Two-Bit said in the subsequent darkness.

The two greasers looked at one another.

"Ah-ha, so you are drunk," smiled Two-Bit.

"You're _drunk_," corrected Dally, pointing to himself. "I_'_m _inebriated_."

"What's the fuckin' difference?"

"Confuses the fuck outta the fuzz if you go all Oxford on 'em," he said, rubbing at his mouth. "Hey, pass me the slip, willya."

Two-Bit handed him another can. "Fancy wordin' don't make it any less true," he said.

"That proposition I do also concur," Dally said, then, taking another swill, added: "Shithead."

He tossed the can out. Two-Bit watched it twirl out the window, bounce with a brief flash of white and roll out on the road...getting flattened by a speeding Ford only a moment later.

_Ain't we all like that_, he thought.

"Dodgin'?" he said.

After a long pause, Dally replied: "Maybe."

"Hell, Dally," Two-Bit grinned, slapping his fellow drunkard on the back. "We're tappin' maples already."

Dally looked once, turned and revved the engine—Two-Bit had begun to sing "O Canada."

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued.<strong>


	2. M&Ms

_A/N: Another chappie! I know I said this was originally going to be a one-shot, but I changed my mind at the last minute. XD_

_Cookie Reviewer Time!_

_TheUglySpirit: You said it, so here it is. Cookies for you!  
><em>_Aerodynamics: Thanks. You might change your mind about the over-the-top thing later...but cookies for you anyway!_

_I know I always say this, but cookies go to all reviewers!_

* * *

><p>How the hell he got into any of this he didn't know. Well, no, in a way he did know how—its fucking name was Keith Mathews.<p>

"Hey, Dal, look, a hitchhiker. Hippie, huh? Kinda funny, though...lookit when this guy turns around—not right _now, _I said when he turns _around_—this guy looks like he gotta take an elephant shit or something," said Two-Bit. "So fuckin' weird...let's bag 'im," he said, his face abruptly turning bright with new possibility.

Dally said nothing.

"Maybe we should go pick 'im up."

"No."

"...fun times."

"Fun times my shit," said Dallas.

They pulled up to the hitchhiker and began the impromptu interview that befalls all hitchhikers from their respective drivers:

"Hey," said Dally.

"Hey," replied the hippie.

"Where to?"

"Anywhere you wanna take me."

"What kinda answer's that?"

"What kinda question's that?"

"Great—fuckin' Sigmund Freud. Let's go, Two-Bit."

"Wait," said the hippie. The peace chains around his neck clattered in a clump of dirty silver as he walked towards the car. "Looks like you two fine men are headed to Canada."

"What's it matter to you?" Dally said.

"Dunno about you greasy cats, but I sure as hell ain't goin' to Nam."

"You know how to get across the border?"

"Does a fuckin' bird know which way is up?"

Dally's eyes narrowed, glinting silver-blue in the afternoon sun.

"You cooler material right now?" he said.

"Got no fuckin' clue what you're talkin' 'bout."

"No acid?" Dally clarified.

The hippie shook his head. "Clean as a whistle, brother."

"Then what's that?"

"M&Ms."

He passed the test. The car door snapped open and he slid in. "Want some M&Ms?" he said. The only sound after that was the clicking of a particular Mr. Mathews' jaw as said M&Ms were taken and devoured with feverish abandon.

"You want some?" repeated the hippie.

"_Don't take anything from a dirty hippie, he's gonna be blowin' pretty unicorn colors out his ass out in a couple of minutes_—no thank you," he said cheerfully after muttering the first part of the thought to himself. The hippie shrugged and retracted his outstretched hand.

Then the road seemed to shrink suddenly before them.

"Wait...was that the intersection?" Dally said.

"Don't fucking know," crunched Two-Bit. "Why?"

"Damn it, damn it, _damn it all!_" Dally shrieked, snapping his head around. "I missed the intersection, that one we were supposed to get to the border on—oh, good _God!_"

Two-Bit shook the M&Ms in the middle of his palm, swilled them down like pills and said: "So? Just turn this sucker around. No harm done."

"Two-Bit, you," said Dally, now tempted to beat him with the steering wheel, "are an idiot beyond scientific comprehension. You were supposed to tell me where to fucking _go_! What the hell are you _doing_?"

"Urrrrrrrp. U-turn time, Captain," said Two-Bit.

Dally slammed his forehead against the pad of the steering wheel, the action of which released a large unbroken screech into the afternoon. When he lifted his head again he stuck his hand out the window and flipped off a couple of passing drivers—some wide-eyed, some raging, a few both.

"Well—why not?" Two-Bit protested. "It's no different than that time you drove doughnuts in the fuckin' parking lot of the Tastee Freeze!"

Dally pensively tipped his head at this; and the motion caused Two-Bit's skin to crawl.

"First of all," he said, smiling while pushing an intelligent finger into his buddy's chest, "that was Steve's car I drove the doughnuts in the parking lot for five hours, not mine. Second, we're not in Okie Fucking Hicktown anymore. Oh, and yes, shall I conclude my argument with my third and most relevant point?—IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING FOUR-WAY!"

The hippie just sat and stared.

"Hey," he said in the silence between the greasers.

No response.

"Hey—you cats wanna hear a dirty joke?" said the hippie, leaning forward.

Dally groaned, now wishing more than ever they hadn't stopped for the hitchhiker. "Pig fell in the mud," he said.

"Shit," blinked the hippie, sadly. "You knew that one already."

"Fuck, I can lullaby better than that."

"Really."

Shifting into second, Dally announced: "There once was a man named Dave,  
>who kept a dead whore in a cave.<br>He said, _Though I admit  
><em>_I am a bit of a shit,  
><em>_Think of the money I save."_

Two-Bit gagged as he popped a pair of green M&Ms.

"Okay, man, I got one, I got one," the hippie said, clapping his palms.  
>"Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,<br>eating her curds and whey;  
>Along came a spider, who sat down beside her,<br>And said, _What's in the bowl, bitch?_"

Dally looked at him through the rearview mirror.

"Nothing?"

Dally grunted.

With nothing to do now, the hippie glanced over Two-Bit's shoulder.

"Those aren't M&Ms, you know," he said. "They're Ex-Lax."

Two-Bit nearly asphyxiated on his own hysteria and two minutes later the hippie was face-down sucking blacktop.

* * *

><p>"Two-Bit," said Dally, his voice piercing the ether of his sleep.<p>

"What?" Two-Bit grunted.

"Start talking."

"What?" he mumbled again.

"Jesus, are you deaf? I said start _talk_ing."

"About what?"

"I don't know. Just start talkin'. Tell me a fucking story—I don't care. Just tell me something."

"Oh, like that one time I left a candy bar sitting too long in my back pocket, forgot about it and let Steve borrow my pants the next day?" Two-Bit said. "Shit, that bugger was hosin' down his asshole with a fucking fire hydrant!"

Then, looking down at the empty box of "special M&Ms" bouncing around on the floor, he grew quiet, wishing all the while karma hadn't taken another victim.

They passed another gas station and he sighed.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Dally said. "Just keep talking."

"Why?"

"I don't fucking know," said Dally. "But I'm falling asleep here, and every time I hear that nails-on-a-chalkboard screech you call a voice it makes my fuckin' blood pressure squirt juice out my ears—" He turned and shook his head cheerfully. "—and then I'm _wide-ass_ awake, man."

"See, I ain't got that problem," said Two-Bit. "I only got a case of high _blonde _pressure."

He looked up, lifting an eyebrow; and Dally smacked him square in his smirking face.

"Listen up, Mr. Bean," he said, shoving the road map in his face with his free hand. "I'm almost at the border, so now we take this route east off into exit 91—then I gotta follow the road until we hit Ontario. And for the love of God, don't miss _any_ fucking intersections this time! If all goes as planned—_if,_ that is, who the hell knows with the good fortune of Winston and Mathews, the Wondrous Screw-Up Brothers—we'll be in Quebec City in about two days."

A defiant crunch was heard as Two-Bit tossed the map into the back seat. "_Quebec City?_ Fuck that shit, Dally—I ain't talkin' no fuckin' French!"

"Say, _Oui-oui, monsieur, 'ow you likez ze snails?_ and blow the rest out your ass," Dally said, suddenly stamping his foot on the gas to prevent the disgruntled greaser from opening the door and running the hell away, screaming bloody murder, off into the midnight distance.

Two-Bit blinked, hearing the eternal bubble in his stomach, and sighed—that wasn't the only thing he'd be blowing out his ass.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued.<em>

_A/N: My dad was the one who actually told me that "Little Miss Muffet" joke. He said it to me as we were going up in a hospital elevator...and I could barely stand up for five minutes after that. You wanna talk about a real ROFL? ...talk to good old Dad. XD_


	3. Pit Stop

_A/N: I actually live near Niagara Falls. Well, in western New York anyway. I've only seen the actual Falls twice...and irony wins again! XD_

_Cookie Reviewer Time!_

_Seriously__: Sorry. I'll have to delete the one-shot thing in the first chapter's A/N. Cookies for you, whoever you are!  
><em>_CrunchyRainbowTacos__: Now you know...that I WANT A CRUNCHY RAINBOW TACO TOO! Lol. Cookies for you!  
><em>_NaiveLove__: Thanks. Cookies for you!  
><em>_Aerodynamics__: What can I say? I imagine they'd be at it all the time had not the rest of the gang kept them in check. Cookies for you!  
><em>_BlankReviwerNamePerson:__ I dunno your name, but thanks and cookies for you! :)_

_Cookies go to all reviewers!_

* * *

><p>The strange new world looked just like Tulsa. In the early hours of the morning the land was flat and black except for some grey treetops scraping a shimmering gold-blue sunrise. The only difference was that—<p>

"Why'd we have to pit stop in the middle of Niagara Falls?" Two-Bit said, shivering. "It's fuckin' cold as _hell_ out here!" Then, thinking about what he just said, he blinked. "...Wait."

"New road map," said Dally, managing to flick out his light in the showers of mist that came and fell on the pier, "since _someone_ just _had _to use mine for his own purposes."

"Hey, don't blame it all on me—don't be tellin' me no gas station has no fuckin' toilet paper in the middle of Indiana either! _You can't go in the field_, they say to me—bullshit! Then just what the shit do they use all those corn husks for, wiping your fucking nose? _Jesus!_" Two-Bit wailed, exclaiming it so loudly that a few tourists stared at him.

One woman took a picture.

Dally sighed, then spit out his cigarette butt over the brink of the massive swirling turquoise waters.

"Hey. Hey Dally. Look. Look at me, man, got your fuckin' Kodak moment right here—I'm takin' a leak the size of Niagara Falls," said Two-Bit, grinning blithely.

"You touch yourself once and I'm pushing you over," said Dally.

And Two-Bit laughed...

...and laughed...

...and laughed...

...and laughed...

...and laughed...

...and laughed...

...and grew quiet.

"Hey—" he said. "Don't do that."

Dally blinked.

"Do what?"

"That."

"What—that?" Dally said. "I'm just slappin' my good buddy on the back." He tapped his palm a few times on Two-Bit's back. "Good times at the eighth world wonder. Yup. Yup. _Yup._"

The last one nearly knocked him over and he glared at Dally, who was now innocently looking up at the pretty sparkly mist rainbows.

"You're giving me the fucking jeebies," said Two-Bit. "Stop it."

"What?" Dally blinked again. Looking around, he lifted his hands up in protest. "Ain't doin' nothin'."

"Do that again and I'm fucking dragging you down with me."

"Fine," Dally muttered. "Chicken-shit."

Silence reigned for a moment—too long a moment. An uneasy thought of home passed between them like the alien waves of water that tumbled about the rocks hundreds of feet below.

"You really afraid of heights?" said Dally.

"You really afraid of spiders?" said Two-Bit.

A pause.

"No," said Dally.

Two-Bit blinked.

"What?" said Dally.

Two-Bit blinked again.

"That's not—"

Two-Bit blinked a third time, this time a corner of his mouth lifting.

"I ain't afraid of no little—stop that—that's my collar, don't you fuck with it—what are you d—go _away_, you creeper—I said go the FUCK—"

Dally ripped off his jacket and whipped it against the ground, stomping on the spider in the midst of an evil howl. Then there was a sickening snap, along with a flash of white light.

Dally looked up.

"Was that what I think it was?" he said.

"No," said Two-Bit, with one fluid motion tossing the poor tourist's expensive camera over the Falls.

"Good. Joke. Buddy," Dally smiled through gritted teeth, and "slapped" Two-Bit even harder on the back.

And Two-Bit ran away in the midst of a soft malevolent chuckle.

* * *

><p>"The drinking age in Canada is nineteen." Dally put down the pamphlet to stare at Two-Bit. "You nineteen yet?"<p>

Two-Bit shrugged, thinking it was irrelevant that Dallas Winston should care about any kind of legal limit age.

"Come on. I just wanna know so the Canadian fuzz don't deport our asses for stupid shit like that."

"No, I'm not nineteen yet. Almost there though, I only got...oh, lookee here! Happy birthday for me in two days," Two-Bit said joyously, waving his driver's license in the air before directly smacking his head against the happy dashboard. "Two. Boozeless. Days."

"Got some blood in your alcohol system?" Dally said, also smacking him upside the head. "Geez, you wino—it ain't like we're gonna die without it."

Two-Bit said nothing.

"Well, just me, anyway," said Dally. "You might."

Two-Bit stuck out his tongue like a spoiled, boozeless child.

"Look," Dally said. "Just stay here and I'll swipe some."

"Whatever," he said to Dally's figure, which by the time of his miserable utterance was muttered had dissolved into the grocery store.

He looked down while he was sitting on the hood, staring quite forlornly into his cigarette. The smoke sometimes rose out of the filter to spill hot ash on his face, falling like tears of tar; but an hour of this stillness had passed and he did not once blink until—

"Go away," he said to a group of passing kids.

He sneered as a little girl giggled.

"What?" he said.

Another kid threw a large tomato at him, which covered the side of his face with blood-red pulp. All was silence as he looked down to the pulp that dripped down his jacket arm.

"Oh," he said. "It's _on_."

* * *

><p>"Return enemy fire!" Two-Bit shrieked, ducking behind the car. "Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!"<p>

He threw some grapes at the little girl standing nearby and the girl, smiling, walked over and tapped him on the shoulder to offer him the ones he had spilled.

"NO! They got me, Tommy! They got me," he staggered, clutching at his shoulder. He lunged at Tommy's shirt with dying fists, "Go on without me...tell my...wife...I...I..."

"You love her?" Tommy offered.

"NO!" he declared with his last few dying breaths, pointing to his socks. "That she can't even do the goddamn laundry right! She didn't separate the reds from the whites!" He shook Tommy's shoulders about very melodramatically. "MY SOCKS CAME OUT PINK! PINK, I TELL YOU! OH, THE HORROR! THE GODDAMNED GIRLY HORROR!"

Thus, that was how Two-Bit Mathews died valiantly in the middle of a western New York grocery store parking lot: amidst a mob of chuckling kids.

"You _asshole_," said Dally, smacking himself in the mouth just as a woman rounded the corner and gaped at her lovely fruit-drenched children.

* * *

><p>"Wonder what's gone on in Tulsa," Two-Bit said.<p>

"All sortsa wonderful shit—world peace," said Dally.

"Dumbass. Can't have world peace if it's a fucking town."

"Well, shit."

"Well, shit."

They looked out the window for a few minutes.

"I'll tell you what's gone on," said Two-Bit.

Dally said nothing as he watched him tap the dashboard.

"So this is Tulsa," he said. "Pretend this paperclip is Pony. And—gimme your ring—this is Johnnycake. And my blade is Steve. And this bottle of Coke is Soda. And this—" he grunted, pulling out a G.I. Joe from his back pocket, "—is Darry. Oh, and these are you and me," he said, holding up two Ken dolls.

Dally lifted an eyebrow.

"Scene One," Two-Bit said, tossing the Ken dolls aside. "The Curtis House: Yesterday."

_It sure is a nice day for some readin', _said Pony-Paperclip. _Yup-yup-yup. But, oh no! My book! Wherever shall I find one? Darry don't like me readin' much of anythin', and I'll be damned if I get caught readin' the tags off of mattresses!_

_I got a book, Ponyboy! s_aid Johnny-Ring happily._ Will you read it to me?_

_Sure, _said Pony-Paperclip, and started to read Johnny-Ring the book, when, all of a sudden—

_I'M HOME! KNOCK, KNOCK, Y'ALL SMARTIE MOTHERFUCKERS! _Darry-Joe screamed as he bust open the front door._ IS THAT INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION I SMELL? _

_No, _said Pony-Paperclip and Johnny-Ring quietly as they tossed the book—a microscopic piece of lint—away.

_Well, then, that's good—NOW IT'S TIME FOR SOME CONTACT SPORTS! YEAH, SPORTS THAT CAN POSSIBLY KILL YOU, WHOO-HOO! _Darry-Joe shrieked.

_NOOOO! s_creamed the ring and paperclip as they were almost dragged out the door, when, all of a sudden—

_Wait right there, evil-doer! _Soda-Coke declared, standing stolidly in the doorway (which was Two-Bit's lap) and billowing an impromptu superhero cape that Two-Bit had made out of a dirty napkin. Then he began to sing the Batman theme song, when, all of a sudden—

"Oh shit!" Two-Bit said. Having forgotten to put the cap back on before the role-play, Soda-Coke spilled in his lap. "Soda's dead! Soda's dead! They killed 'im, you guys!"

_NOOOO!_ screamed Steve-Blade, jumping off the dashboard in a twisted form of suicide. _Good-bye, cruel fuckin' Sodaless world!_

Pony-Paperclip, Darry-Joe and Johnny-Ring fell over as Dally rolled his eyes.

"Scene Two," said Two-Bit. "The Parking Lot: Three Nights Ago."

A pause.

"Oh wait—I forgot," he said, "these are Angela and Tim."

He assumed an unnaturally high-pitched voice for Angela, who was a piece of string: _I'm in love with Mr. Dallas Winston! I act like a tough bitch, but I really like pink unicorns and rainbows and Ricky Martin! But I won't tell my dear old Dally that till later, teehee!_

Two-Bit then assumed an unnaturally rumbling-pitched voice as he picked up Dally's designated Ken doll. _Shuddup, Angela! I just slashed your brother's tires, and even though I could possibly be murdered in cold blood for it and it'd be all in fairness, I'll give you the fucking benefit of the doubt and pretend to be all fuckin' Brooklyn gangster and run your ass over. But the truth is, I dunno how to drive a fuckin' cardboard box to save my life, and I really like Ricky Martin too!_

_Hooray for Dally, my pansy-ass hero! _Angela-String shrilled.

Two-Bit resumed his normal speaking voice.

_Uh, guys, if you hadn't noticed already, Mr. Timothy Shepard is coming to whup our asses_, stated a strangely chiseled and shirtless Two-Bit Ken Doll.

_I love you too, Angela,_ said Dally-Ken-Doll. _I'm just a dickweed though, 'cause I don't like having less than three girls in the bed with me at any given time._

_That's okay—_started Angela-String, when, all of a sudden—

_Whose keys are these?_ bellowed the approaching Tim Shepard, who was at the moment a blank crumpled piece of notebook paper.

_They're mine,_ said Dally-Ken-Doll. _Wait...oh shit._

The next three minutes were composed of the crumpled piece of paper beating the shit out of the Ken Doll. Then a complete SFX of a nuclear explosion sounded, along with a tossing of the items around the Tulsa-Dashboard, since Tim-Paperwad, in his rage, had forgotten he had left his cigarette butt lying near the gas station, the likes of which blew up everything in a melodramatic explosion, killing everyone—Angela, Dally and Tim, that is—except for Two-Bit, who had wisely run for the hills during their scuffle and was safely out of reach of the fiery 60-foot blast radius.

"And then I get a Penthouse with twenty of those beach Barbies and I live happily ever after," said Two-Bit.

And Dally looked like he was in physical pain.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued.<em>


	4. Damn 'mericans

_A/N #1: Cookie Reviewer Time!_

_DallasWinston'sGirl7: Hey, thanks so much. =D Cookies for you!  
><span>beba78<span>: We shall never know where Two-Bit got those dolls...but I can imagine him sitting all day playing with Barbies in their beach house, flicking the heads off of the Ken dolls and laughing in a hysterical drunken fit over the whole thing. O.o Weird image coming in now. Cookies for you!  
><span>NaiveLove<span>: You are too kind, my friend! Cookies for you!_

_Cookies go to all reviewers!_

_A/N #2: Extra short chapter today...__August 16: Elvis died. =( R.I.P. Elvis!_

* * *

><p>The two stared straight out the window to a bar just across the border. Little lights scattered bits of yellow into the darkness.<p>

"Two-Bit," said Dally.

"Yes, my comrade?" Two-Bit said. He was busy stuffing all of his luggage—a dirty T-shirt and a watch he had packed in a suitcase during another drunken midnight stupor—and so had little sense to register the possibilities that now laid before him.

"I durst say, what is naught better than fucking with dorkwad drunks?"

"Fucking with drunk dorkwad Canadians?"

Dally smirked from behind the wheel. "Hell yeah."

"Another one'a your evil plots to steal some gold," said Two-Bit, tossing a cigarette butt out the window.

"Yeah," he replied, adding quickly to deter any potential protest: "But you gotta be the sheriff this time."

"Sheriff?" said Two-Bit. "They gotta sheriff here?"

"Motherfucker was asleep, so I rolled this for ya," said Dally, tossing a gold badge and spare uniform over his head.

"Shit, man—" grumbled Two-Bit, pulling the uniform on hesitantly despite being glad for something to wear that wasn't a dirty T-shirt, "why do you always get to be the criminal? Maybe I wanna be the criminal too, you know—I'm the one with the creeper moustache."

Dally knocked the black switchcomb out from underneath Two-Bit's jutted upper lip.

* * *

><p>Since Two-Bit and Dally were the more experienced delinquents of their entourage, they had devised a surprisingly organized code-speak amongst themselves:<p>

_Torro_ meant to run away; to repeat it twice was the equivalent of screeching, _Get the hell out of there!_ and was uttered whenever the bulls were sure to come.

_Commies_ were friends. _Red devils_ always had your back.

_Fuzzies or furries_ meant authority figures, particularly those concerned with the enforcement of the law. _Teddy bears _meant undercover cops. On some occasions they would call the SWAT team _Lassie—_but usually Timmy didn't fall _that_ far down the well.

Unless it was a rare case of _Jiffy-Pop_—arson.

_Bronze_ was beer. _Silver_ was liquor. And _gold..._precious _gold_._ Gold_ was the good stuff. Swipe some_ gold _and you were blissfully regretting it two weeks afterward.

Unless you ran into a _taco_—a bouncer.

No one in Tulsa had the slightest notion what they'd be talking about when they said they saw a greasy Commie get knocked on his ass by a taco drenched in bronze, so it was only logical to assume the same irrational speak would hold no intrinsic meaning to the red-eyed patrons in the backwoods bar in Ontario.

The scene, to put it simply, was something out of _High Noon._

"You gotta card, son?" asked Sheriff Mathews.

"Nope," said Dally.

From the patrons: nada.

"You're gonna have 'ta come with me, grease," said the sheriff in his best Canadian accent, hitching a thumb in a loophole in his waist. Clamping a hand down on the perpetrator's shoulder, he whirled him around.

When Dally was "apprehended" he looked wild, his eyes almost carefree in the natural habitat of smoke and music and rough laughter. "Who you callin'_ grease?_" he howled too loudly. The music slowed at the echoes of the last word; many pairs of mumbling eyes lifted to observe the scene.

"I ain't callin' you nothin' you ain't," said Two-Bit, looking down to spit most wisely in his cup, "_grease._"

Dallas bellowed: "You think you can take me, little man?"

Two-Bit landed a left that hardly contacted Dally, since Dally snapped his neck around with the motion of the blow—but to the bleary-eyed wit of the bar it appeared devastating. "I say, dear fellow, they call me fucking _Cassius_!"

"This town's gonna cut out that shiny little badge from your shiny little heart once I get done with you, Sheriff," Dally hissed.

"Barter you can't take candy from a baby," said Two-Bit, "without gettin' diaper rash yourself."

"Oooooo," murmured the drunken bar.

Dally flicked out his blade and Two-Bit flicked out his. No one seemed bothered by the fact that the trusty and honorable "Sheriff" had yet to pull out a gun on the delinquent.

"Yeah, whip his 'Merican ass!"someone slurred.

"Who you talkin' to?" they said simultaneously.

"Dunno," sniffed the drunkard. "Just wanna see someone get gutted."

The two paused, blinked, then "glared" at one another.

"Dally," Two-Bit whispered.

"What?"

"Step to the left."

Dally lurched slightly to the left.

"No, no, no," Two-Bit hissed, waving his arm. "_My_ left. _Your_ right. I gotta get close to the gold here, Dal, come on! Alright. Let's do this again. Now we can't make 'em sniff the bluff. Don't be smilin' and what-not. Though your ugly mug ain't much for smiling anyway. Come on. Don't look like that—look madder! Look—I'm the bad guy, I just paid Johnny an insult. _Hey kid! You're so greasy you don't even need to get outta bed, you just slide on down the street!_ And it's the bottom of the ninth for little old Johnny Cade as he strikes _out_. Look at 'im, he's so fuckin' sad, draggin' his bat all the way back to bench. His bottom lip's juttin' out. He looks up at his hero, the big badass Dally Winston, and he's gonna—he's gonna—he's gonna—whadd'ya gonna do, Winston? Whadd'ya gonna do? Whoa, Nelly—not _that_ mad! It's called improvisation. We love our Johnnycake. Focus—keep your eye on the fuckin' fuzzy here."

Dally's eyes narrowed—partly in rage, partly in confusion, and a little bit in roughhousing idiocy.

"Good man. Now make like you're gonna go for me, ya greasy piece o' shit."

Three seconds passed and they were rolling amidst a mob of awed and stoned faces.

"If there's anything better than gettin' bounced, it's getting bounced by a bunch of syrup-suckers!" Dally screamed, slamming his fist again into Two-Bit's stomach.

The gold glittered somewhere in the distance, bubbling steam inside silent glasses. Only three feet stood between them and the gold.

The bar grew silent, haunted by some nationalistic impulse to kill the American boy where he stood—but Dally didn't mind too much. Two-Bit was a goddamn artist at these things.

Two-Bit's heels clicked together in the following quiescence. Nearly cracking, Dally wondered if Sheriff Mathews could still feel his balls sauntering around in that skin-tight uniform.

"'Merican scum, ain't got no kindness for folks like you," said Two-Bit. "With your government fullo' crooks wantin' to blow up the world an' what-not. If it ain't the Commies, it's you. And to be honest—" A slow malevolent smile dripped down his face as his voice lowered to a pin-drop. "—I'd prefer the red devils any day."

Dally almost smiled.

"I might be 'Merican scum," he said, "but at least in my country we ain't suckin' maple juice drinkin' off all our alimony." Shooting up in the smoky bar air as a white-hot fuse, he pounded the table with a fistful of pride. "U-S-of-fuckin'-_A_, _baby!_"

And the Ontario bar, which had since been boiling like a supernova, finally imploded on itself.

"Torro, torro, Dally! Torro! Grab that gold and _ole _them drunk-ass tacos!" was the last thing Dally remembered hearing Two-Bit scream before running off with the keg into the depths of the night. "Fuck Canada, my fine Commie friend—we're goin' to good old _Meshico!_"

* * *

><p><em>To be continued...dun dun dunnnnn.<em>


	5. Successfully Drunk

_A/N# 1: Mini chapter! Interlude! Paid commercial! Whatever you want to call it! I am burned out, y'all!_

_A/N#2 : School starts tomorrow! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!_

_A/N #3: Cookies will resume regular broadcasting right after this paid commercial...xD_

* * *

><p>They stared ahead, waiting behind the rustic piece of wood that was the reception desk. All was quiescence in the tiny inn room, except for the fact that they were successfully drunk. In any sense of the word, "drunk" meant drunk, but "successfully drunk"...now that was something to write home about.<p>

If they could have held their heads up to write, that is.

"Hey," said Two-Bit after an eternity of waiting, "I can make music."

He rapped his palm against the bell on the reception desk ten times. Each time rang out louder than the last, metallic shrieks that garnered a host of suspicious glares from other patrons, but placed a collective grin on their faces.

"That's fuckin' beautiful," said the awed Dally, tapping his elbow with the back of his hand. "Hey, do't again, man."

Two-Bit crashed his palm again onto the bell and Dally pounded it with his own fist. In this state the two did not quite register pain and were, suffice to say, laughing like idiots.

Then the woman descended from the stairwell, a look of sobriety frozen on her face.

Sensing this, Two-Bit backed up and said: "You talk to 'er."

"No way," said Dally.

"Why not?"

"Dumbass, she's a whore."

"Do explain," sniffed Two-Bit.

"I ain't goin' no mind no business of mine talkin' t'no bimbo if she ain't gonna mind 'er own business talkin' t'me," he said. "'Cause I mean, wha' kinda girl just walks down here like that, 'less she's a whore or something, and she could roll us of all our dough, an' I mean like cookie dough, my greasy baking friend, see, 'cause tha's what them whores do, see, they go to some decent chaps like you an' me, an' they roll us like cookie dough so they can go out and do wha'ever the hell they do—go shopping or somethin' like that, y'know, see, 'cause I hate girls who wear them goddamn poodle skirts, y'know, 'cause they're just too fuckin' Jackie Onassis for me, man."

Silence reigned for a long moment.

"What?"

Dally looked once at the desk, sniffed sharply, and said: "What the hell did I just say?"

"Musta been a lie," concluded Two-Bit.

"Dun-fuckin'-no."

"Yeah—that."

The woman looked once at the greasers, whom were now smiling too blithely at her. She sighed, fished out a key from the cabinet, and sauntered back up the stairwell. 

* * *

><p>"We are too drunk," Two-Bit remarked. "New high score. Move the 'ell over."<p>

He fell flat on the bed, having forgotten that Dally was still on it. Dally mumbled a string of incoherencies as he put his palm on his head and pushed him further aside on the mattress, away from the little pinpoint of cold that was still there; but pushing aside a drunken Two-Bit was like trying to lift a house up by its foundations.

"Shuddup, we ain't drunk," said Dally. "We jus' got some narcolepsy."

"An' pink eye."

"And, in your case, a bad case o' the stupid disease. But I think that's when you're sober, too."

"Hell, I got abducted by aliens last night," murmured Two-Bit, lifting up his wrist. "Some race called, uh, the Jenny Andersons gotta holda me an' put their super-secret spy code on m'arm. See?"

Dally swatted the phone number away, lost his balance and rolled off the bed with a muffled thump.

"Bet the aliens weren't the only ones doin' the probin' last night," he said, seemingly in spite of the fact he was lying on the carpet face down.

"Hehe," chuckled Two-Bit, "at least I know my left from my right, Mr. Up-Down I Dunno How We Jus' Rode Shotgun Down Main Street."

He held up his hands in front of his face, his eyes focusing for a moment, and Dally punched them.

"Fuck't all, Two-Bit—" he slurred, "you'd go missing for twenty years in a fucking cereal box looking for the prize at the bottom."

"Fuck," said Two-Bit cheerfully, "when you were born you came out your mother's ass."

"Fuck—if you were an ass-baby you'd still have to ask for directions."

"Fuck. Your mama took one look at you and said, _Now where's the baby?_"

"Well, fuck me tender. At least she thought I wasn't you," said Dally. "Oops, I mean, a giant drunkshit. Did she feed you right from the breast or did she hook you up to a beer tent? I don't know—_they're both the same!_"

"Fuckit, Dal—" retorted his friend with flawless inebriated logic, "the doctors shoved you back in. The only reason you're out is 'cause you got good behavior." He winked underneath his heavy eyelids and smiled devilishly. "And Mama said you were a _really_ good boy."

"Fuck—you're still on probation."

"Fuck, every Mother's Day is a conjugal visit—oh _shit!_ _Whad'ya do that for, you piece of_—"

And Dally smiled serenely; pushing aside a drunken howling Two-Bit was like trying to lift a volcano from the base of the mountain—but he was lavaproof. 


	6. Of Bubbles and Dick Clark

"I think," said Two-Bit, "I should have packed more than a dirty T-shirt."

Snow pelted the world in tempests of white.

"No shit, Sherlock," Dallas mumbled, looking miserable. His eyes narrowed beneath his sunglasses as he pulled the knob back and shifted into second.

Two-Bit remembered once how Dally said he hated snow, how Brooklyn was a dump heap of the stuff. Heavy, sticky, black oily kinda shit, Dally said, not like those nice little prissy-ass sheets that glistened white sparkles on the ground and then burned up in the sun the next day.

And here he had always thought it was the usual indifference talking when Dally would shut himself up on snow days.

"Snowblind?"

"Maybe," Dally said, then added**: **"Look behind you. Is that jackass still tailgating me?"

"Can't see much of nothin'. Maybe you did a doughnut when you turned at the border," Two-Bit mused. "Or maybe we're too far up north."

"You're telling me I did a doughnut," Dally said, "across the whole fucking _continent?"_

"Umm—" He looked behind him, as if for confirmation. "—maybe."

Dally punched him in the arm.

"We're gonna die," said Two-Bit. "You know that, right?"

"We're not gonna die."

"Then turn on the damn heat, willya?"

"I can't. Battery'll get low."

"Battery'll get low anyway, dingleberry."

"You just gotta answer for everything, don't you, Mr. Fucking Bean? Shut up and let me think," Dally said.

"Well, you better think of something fast, or else we're gonna be some fucking polar bear's frozen greasy TV dinners."

"Polar bears ain't got—o_h_ _shit, what the hell's that?"_

From the endlessness of white, a figure had appeared suddenly in the middle of the road. It reminded Dally slightly of Angela—without the vapors of cruelty shrouding it, of course—white and thin, wrapped in a layer of plaid, with patches sewn over the pockets. It wore little else but this and a scarf; a bright red can of gasoline hung from its left hand.

Two brown eyes ringed with some sad hue of gold peered out at Dally, and fine lines ran down from the corners of its wide mouth, a mouth too used to smiling—

Dally stomped on the brake. The rest was a blur of motion and time.

Then the world was silent, and white, and still.

Two-Bit smacked Dally in the ribs, grateful he was still alive to do so, red and screaming**:** "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD—ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?"

"Call me crazy all you want," said Dally. "I think I just saw Soda."

* * *

><p>They had barely dragged him to the car when Two-Bit began asking idiotic questions—questions Soda just didn't want to answer. He looked sleepy, and his lids kept drooping over the walnuts of his eyes.<p>

"Is your name Soda?"

Soda sighed**:** "Yeah."

"Okay, good. So you're not crazy."

Soda said**:** "I hope not, Doctor Two-Bit."

"You hungry?"

"No."

Doctor Two-Bit concluded**: **"He's cold."

"What was your first clue, dumbass?" Dally said, folding his jacket down onto the backseat. "Come on—take this. Don't want you hackin' it up in my car."

"When we went to Ontario, we got lost, and some tuff old hags gave us all these blankets," said Two-Bit, dumping three heavy quilts onto the listless Soda, "'cause even these antiques got it figured Canada's one great big piece of ice."

Soda sniffed his gratitude.

"So," said Dally. "What now?"

Soda said: "Drive."

Dally blinked. Soda leaned in closer; his breath radiated a mixture of Pepsi, oil and chocolate.

"You deaf? I said _drive."_

The car started slowly on down the snow-bitten road._ Great_, Dally thought. He could feel Soda's eyes burrow into the back of his head as he turned on the headlights. They were smack-dab in the middle of a snowy nowhere driving an _auto mechanic _around. He could just hear it now**:** _you checked your tire pressure WHEN? Hot damn, Dally, you drivin' a Plymouth or the fucking Hindenburg?_

But Soda remained silent and still. About an hour later, he parted his lips and murmured, "How long you two been riding AWOL?"

"Days...weeks," Dally said. "Don't really know. Minutes are like weeks with this grease-monkey. I mean, just the other day the dumbshit goes and he—"

Without warning, Soda peered into Dallas' eyes from the rear view mirror and announced**: **"Johnny's been uneasy, man."

His heart thudded. Softer. Slower. Sinking.

"Real uneasy."

His chest sunk as if an arrow had found him.

"Yeah," he said, softly,"I know."

No one said anything for a while.

Then Two-Bit said**: **"What're _you _doing here?"

"I'm lookin' for the broad who gave me the clap," Soda said.

They stared at him.

He stared at them.

The snow pattered on the windows.

His eyes grew bright.

"Ha!" he screamed, clamping down on their shoulders and shaking them. "You shoulda seen the look on your faces when you thought I had the clap. Whassamatter, boys? You gonna vacuum the car seats inside-out tonight? Sorry 'bout that. I really am glad to see ya. My car broke down in the middle of Blizzard Hicktown, USA, and I had no one to fuck with in twelve hours."

"Oh, hell, Sodapop," said Two-Bit, partly relieved at his sudden reanimation, and, strangely enough, partly alarmed. He turned around and showed him a small slip of paper he had pulled out from his wallet. "Is your number 5013?"

Soda nodded.

Two-Bit lowered his head down and motioned for Dally to do the same. "Dammit, Dal, _t__hat's_ why he came up all this way," he whispered.

"Why?"

"Poor dummy—he thought I was calling _him_ when I was supposed to be talking to Kathy. She goes somewhere up around here to see her Pops this time of year. I thought she could take us in, so I just called and told her to go meet us at the border near Vermont, you know, before we tanked out. See—" He fumbled briefly with the piece of paper, tapping her number, "her number in Vermont's 5013, too. I musta forgot and got the area code wrong, so Soda thought I wanted him to come up instead."

"Yeah, but...no Pony? No Darry? Johnny? Steve? Or even Sandy? That's just weird," Dally whispered. "I don't like it."

"Look, just think it through before you go nuts on the kid, alright? Pony and Johnny's got school, Darry's gotta be there to give them their daily paddlings, Steve wouldn't even get six feet out the driveway 'fore he smashed the damn Ford into a tree, and Sandy—"

"Don't you think he could have taken_ somebody_ with him, not just fly off high and dry?"

"Well, to be fair, we didn't either," Two-Bit said.

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're two _different_ people, you fuck-ass Siamese twin," Dally said. "But we're so fucked-up together, apparently, we don't even count as two separate people anymore. Don't you look at me like that, it's your fucking fault, Clyde—only _you_ could make the same wrong call twice."

Two-Bit flinched at the mention of _twice._ He held up the yellow wallet-sized piece of paper in front of his face. "Nah, man, it's the names. I got them alphabetized. Look."

"Dumbass, Kathy's not even next to Soda—"

"Not _those_ names, stupid, somebody can steal the numbers that way," Two-Bit huffed. "I use code names. Kathy's _Baby_. Soda's _Bubbles_. They're right next to each other. See?"

Dally snatched the piece of paper away and scanned it. "Which one's mine?" he said—after a long pause, knowing full well curiosity killed the cat. _N__ot Dick Clark_, he thought. _God, not Dick Clark_—_I swear on my mother's fucking grave, if it's Dick Clark I'm gonna—_

"Dick Clark," he said.

Dally slammed his head against the car horn and did not let go until three solid minutes had passed.

Two-Bit lifted his head, his eyes gleaming grey. He gestured for Soda to observe his victim. "See, Bubbles—Dick Clark's your typical jackass-in-training."

Dally said**:** "Not me. You. I'm the innocent in all of this."

"Shit, Dal," Soda mumbled. "Sayin' you're innocent is like sayin' the Devil's Catholic."

Dally's eyes flashed.

"Sounds like you two need some professional help," Soda added, his grin growing thick on his face.

A venomous corner of Dally's mouth began to lift. Two-Bit was expressionless. "What? You calling us crazy-ass amateurs? Or are you just calling us _crazy?_"

"I ain't callin' you nothin'," Soda said, averting his gaze from Dally's smile. It was bad enough when the guy smirked—when he smiled and looked happy, it was the countenance of death. Soda closed his eyes, shivering. He knew better. When Dallas Winston smiled, someone somewhere was somehow going to die.

He was sure of it.

* * *

><p>They decided to wait out the storm with the last of their Ontario "gold". Sodapop apparently found this quite amusing, since Dally laid back in his seat, convinced that Two-Bit was really his pillow.<p>

Dally tumbled over and slurred in response to Two-Bit's question: "With Jane Fonda, right?"

Soda grinned.

"It's called a _horror movie,_ not a whore movie_,_" Two-Bit corrected with a sharp slap upside the head, "crazy drunk-ass grease."

"_I'm sorry, Mommie dearest_," Dally sang in a high-pitched voice, leaning his head back on his buddy's lap again and smiling earnestly up. Two-Bit smiled down on him and smacked him square in the face. "_Please don't beat me up, Mommie dearest! I'll be good! I promise I'll knock on the door next time you're gang-banging a bunch of schoolboys! Oh, Mommie dear, I love you, Mommie!_"

"That's Mum to you," Two-Bit said.

Dally sat up, causing a few strands of white hair to rise on top of his rustled head. He grunted and ran an indifferent hand through his hair. "You say Mum with a U?" He snorted. "Asshole."

Two-Bit stuck a proud thumb to his chest. "I say _Mum_ with a _U_ 'cause that's what's bitchin' in Two-Bit's kitchen."

"It's _Mom,_" Dally corrected.

"Yeah, that's what you used to say, baby. Now you just say, _Where's my goddamn pancakes, Mrs. Butterworth?_"

"Oh, hardy-har-fuckin'-har."

With the three blankets and Dally's jacket drawn tight to his chin, Soda glanced out the window and said, too quietly: "I don't say anything."

The snow whistled.

* * *

><p>"If I was queer," Soda declared, slamming down another one from the stash, "I'd probably do Clint Eastwood. Yeah, I'll have 'nother one. Freezin' my balls off here."<p>

He took another swill. His buddies looked at one another; he hardly ever drank.

"He don't seem the type for that stuff," Two-Bit said.

"Have it your way, then," Soda said, flashing him another sleepy smile, "how 'bout you, Dal? What'dya got?"

"Dunno," sniffed the response.

"Okay. I'm gonna close my eyes an' point to the nearest guy, an' you tell me if I'm right on," Soda murmured, covering his eyes. "How 'bout...you an'...ummmm...him?"

When he opened his eyes he was pointing to Two-Bit.

He shook his head.

"Nah," Dally agreed.

"Last time I checked, you two were half in love with each other."

"No way. He's too skinny for me," Dally said, turning around and prodding Two-Bit in the ribs. "I don't like bones pokin' me in the bed and shit. I mean, jus' look at 'im. Fuckin' scrawny as hell."

Two-Bit pretended to blow on his thumb as if his hand were a balloon, revealing an inflating middle finger. "We ain't really havin' this conversation," he said, "are we?"

Dally grinned at this, and subsequently announced: "If I got somebody fucking me through the sheets, I want it to hurt so fuck-ass bad I can feel it my gut. I want it to be some great big guy, you know, not one'a them candy-asses you see in prison. Soap-dropping, come on, I've seen guys fuck worse than that. I've seen guys bleed their guts out—yeah, that kinda thing. Man, if I weren't straight, he'd tie me to the fuckin' ceiling upside down and—"

Two-Bit sat straight up. "I'm not queer, alright? Lord Almighty!"

"Beg to differ," Dallas sniffed. "You sure got Soda turned on that time you got smashed at Merril's and made him an interesting little..._phone call_..." He turned to Soda. "You remember that? That time he was fuckin' hornier than a billygoat?"

Soda squealed and pointed. "Aw, hell yeah, he was!"

Two-Bit glared at Soda, who was now racked with chuckles. "Look, it was _one time_, and I thought your number was _Kathy's,_ you asshole!"

"Shut your trap—you wouldn't even let me talk. You went on and on for 'bout half an hour. Glory, the first five minutes I was laughing so hard, I was crying," Soda said, "and halfway through the call I almost shit myself. My face was so red and so wet that when Pony came by, I had to tell the poor kid I smashed my finger in the door by accident. But God, that was pure gold—and y'know, naturally I hadda call Steve."

Two-Bit screamed: "_Steve heard all of that, too?" _

"God damn, Two-Bit, you only had a quarter left," Dally said. He tapped the end of his cigarette onto the car floor and crushed the following embers with his heel. "Gotta get that bang for your buck somehow."

Two-Bit looked down, shaking his head.

"Yeah, Steve heard it," Soda affirmed. "He was pissin' in his pants, too. Was laughing so hard he called Evie, and Evie called Kathy. And then we all just listened—except for Sandy, I think, 'cause she thought it was too mean to—and Kathy laughed her ass off."

Two-Bit's face turned red and writhing. He looked up, and drew in a stiff breath. His eyes were filled with brimstone, his nostrils pulsing ellipses.

"Struck a nerve there, Mathews?" Dally said.

He crashed down with a swing, and a left exploded upon the nerves on Dally's face, made brittle as ice with cold and booze. "You're lucky Bubbles is in the back seat!" he screamed. "Then again, maybe not—I'm gonna kick your ass so hard _he_ feels it!"

"I'm gonna kick your ass so hard," Dallas said, glaring down on the smaller greaser, "you'll be shittin' my boot out tomorrow!"

"Big words, Sally Winston!"

"Oh, that's it," Dally hissed. "Let's __go___,_ Two-Shit!"

Soda blinked.

"You wanna fight? You wanna fight? You wanna fight me, little boy blue?" Two-Bit shrilled, flicking out his blade. "Here's an idea_—stick your head up my ass and_ _fight for air!_"

"_Wouldn't be the first time you stuck somebody's head up your ass, now would it?"_

Two-Bit lunged for Dally's throat; and, nestled safely in the blankets, "Bubbles" blinked again, yawned, and finally fell asleep.

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued.<strong>

**A/N: "I say ****_Mum_**** with a ****_U_**** 'cause that's what's bitchin' in Two-Bit's kitchen." **

**LOL, is it bad to laugh at yourself? Uh-oh, I'm getting a weird image of Two-Bit being gangsta! He's the REAL Slim Shady, y'all! xD**


	7. TGITTD

_A/N: I could only think of this. Major writer's block._

* * *

><p>On Fridays, people in the normal world always said TGIF: Thank God It's Friday. His friends, perhaps the farthest things away from any hope of normalcy, always said TGITTD:<p>

_Thank God It's Torture Two-Bit Day._

He was sure of it, feeling like a Green Beret sneaking into the heart of Saigon stalking around the corn chip and Mr. Clean aisles. Trust no one on Fridays, he thought to himself, and perhaps you will make it out alive—or just get through your day without carpet burn marks across your face and stomach. Nope. He couldn't explain that one to himself no matter how hard he tried.

Torture Two-Bit Day always fell on a Friday. Coincidentally, Fridays were the days he'd get the most stoned—so he could not feel the torture.

Two-Bit glanced left, then glanced right, and made a break from the store to the car—

"What'd you get, Two-Bit?" Soda beamed.

_Shit._

"A few things,"said Two-Bit, ripping the trunk open, "here and there. Come on, let's go 'fore they wise up."

"But Dally's still in there."

Two-Bit _pshawed_ as he stuffed several items in the trunk. "When good ol' Two-Bit was takin' a leak in the Johnsons' backyard the night they TPed it, did Dally ever say, hey, let's not, good ol' Two-Bit's still in there? No! When good ol' Two-Bit busted out the school windows, did Dally ever say to the fuzz, good ol' Two-Bit couldn't have done it, 'cause he's still in there, learnin' important stuff—like math and how to snag three blondes with one line? No!"

"Yes, he did," Soda said. "He actually got slammed for that—"

"No, no, no, no, no, no!" Two-Bit declared like a spoiled child, stomping the ground.

Soda lifted his eyebrows, wondering why Two-Bit had taken a fancy to referring to himself in the third person. He shrugged, most wisely diagnosing the patient as half-crocked. "Hold it," he said sternly, studying his innocently smiling buddy. To put it simply, Two-Bit was twinkling...he had hidden tinsel underneath his jacket.

"It's just a few things," Two-Bit said, stuffing the yard of tinsel into the trunk. "Big whoop."

Soda seized Two-Bit by the collar of his jacket, ripping it off. A pile of novelty items, candy bars, cigarettes, peanut butter, anniversary cards—Two-Bit had a tendency to steal strange things when he was stoned—and five beer cans fell out.

"It woulda been six, but good ol' Two-Bit got thirsty," Two-Bit said, grinning like an idiot.

"You swiped the whole fucking_ store_, _man!_" Soda shrilled. "_Put this stuff back!_"

"Hey, Soda, lookit this," Two-Bit said, ignoring him. Turning around, he put on a pair of slinky-eyeglasses. "Lookit. Lookit me. I'm Donny and Marie before they put their eight tons of makeup on. Look—lookit. I got bags in my eyes." He pivoted back and forth on his feet, clattering the slinky-eyes together and grinning as he scanned the horizon. "Oh dear, oh damn, where is the fuckin' mascara wand when you need it the most?"

Soda groaned. "Why do you always get to be Donny and Marie?"

"'Cause they're really both men and you know it," Two-Bit said, sticking out his tongue.

And thus, the indignant Sodapop pulled back one of the slinky-eyes and snapped Two-Bit in the face with it.

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm not listening!"<em> Two-Bit had shrilled for entire length of the forty-minute ride downtown, covering his ears and shutting his eyes.

Dally grinned evilly. "So Mickey Mouse is walkin' down the street, singin', dancin', mindin' his own business and what-not, when, all of a sudden—_boom!_ Speed Racer comes in doing 85 down the old dirt road."

Two-Bit's nostrils flared as he stuck his fingers in his ears and began to resolutely belt out "I Can't Get No Satisfaction".

"Speed Racer is rocked and _crocked. _But Mickey's still waiting for the light to go green." Dally glanced at Soda, who winked at him from the rearview mirror. Two-Bit pouted out the window, still shrilling as perfectly as a tone-deaf Mick Jagger. "Then, all of a sudden, the light goes green! And Mickey keeps on walking until—until Speed Racer glances up to readjust the rearview mirror and—and, me oh my! Mickey notices one of his shoe's left untied."

"—_I can't get no girly action, I can't get no—_"

"There's snow and sleet and shit on the ground as Speed Racer stomps down on the brakes, but—he forgot—he forgot to put brake fluid in the car this morning!" Dally almost pissed himself looking at the expression on Two-Bit's face. "The horror! The horror! Oh, the fucking _horror!_"

"_Sat-is-fac-tion, a-hey-hey-hey! That's what I say!_"

"And then some hillbilly comes and fries Mickey Mouse up for breakfast the next morning," Dallas said. "The end."

Two-Bit, having coincidentally finished the song, stared at him.

"Well, you wanted to know what happened on Mickey Mouse, so I told you," Dally said innocently. "What—don't you believe me?"

"Aw, hell, Dally," Two-Bit said. "You just told me that story 'cause you wanted to forget that it's been seven blocks and you still hafta take a leak."

"That's bullshi—"

They hit a pothole, bounced up, and he winced. He ignored Two-Bit's evil smile. Eventually, he stopped at a railroad crossing looking out at the city. He glanced left; he glanced right. He was about to gun it when—

A fifteen-minute long coal shipment came in from Toronto.

Dally cursed the cruel and sadistic universe in an unbroken string of oaths.

"Meanwhile, it's the ninth hole, where Dallas Winston is preparing to take his first tinkle. Observe how his eyes shift uneasily in search of a good place to piss," Two-Bit announced in a whisper. He turned towards Soda. "I have a feeling this'll be a close one. Will he make it to the semifinals this time? Will he go on to land the hole-in-one? Or will this be like his last season—under par?" He smiled. "Let's watch."

Dally groaned, slamming his hand on the horn in vain.

"Fine," Two-Bit said, fumbling around behind his seat. He pulled out a thermos. "Just do it in the cup. We won't watch you," he said, adding: "Much."

"Yeah—smile pretty for your Christmas card," Soda whispered.

"What was that, _Bubbles?_" Dallas growled as he shifted in his seat again.

Soda blinked at the ceiling. He loved watching potty dances, especially when someone like Dally was just ready to crack. "Nuthin'."

"What the shit is this, Two-Bit? A thermos? Fuck that shit. I ain't pissing in your spit," Dally said, throwing the thermos into the back seat and defiantly wrapping his knuckles around the steering wheel.

Two-Bit seemed offended at this, crossing his arms. "You sayin' my spit's worse than your piss?"

"No," said Dally, grinning slowly. He knew he shouldn't—but he also knew you only lived once. "I'm sayin' my piss tastes better in Kathy's mouth."

Soda's incredulous face grew red and pinched. Dally tried not to crack, rubbing good-naturedly at his mouth. Two-Bit sat dumbstruck, looking like he'd been shot.

Soda snorted. He and Dally began laughing, softly.

"S_hud-the-hell-dup!_" Two-Bit roared after the shock subsided.

Soda leaned in from the back to clap palms with Dally.

"Par one for Winston," he said.

* * *

><p>"You had your turn. I want the phone now," Two-Bit whined, taking the receiver from Dally. He wasn't sure if it was him, or if his eyes looked redder. He had just finished calling Johnny, and was now leaning against the side of the car, glaring at the growing filter he never bothered to flick away.<p>

"What?" he snapped. "So you can screw up the call again?"

"No—I'm gonna call Darry and ask him if he's noticed Soda ain't home yet. Then I'm gonna call Soda and ask 'im if he's noticed Darry's fridge is still running."

"Yeah," said Dally, seizing Two-Bit's quarter and rolling it down the road, "not if you can't catch it first."

"_My quarter!_" he shrilled very melodramatically, clapping his palms over the sides of his gaping face—he had a tendency to dramatize strange things when he was stoned—and bolted off.

They watched him with amusement.

Two-Bit started in a mad dash for the quarter, which kept on rolling and rolling down the slick gray road. He chased after it for a good half the block, tripped over an empty beer can that slipped out of his pocket, stumbled over himself, cursing the ever-rolling quarter, bumped into an old woman, cursed again, got hit in the shin with the walker of aforementioned old woman, performed the famous hitty-shinny dance, which found his buddies doubled over in convulsions, until the coin turned a slight left and dropped into the gutter. Two-Bit let out a yelp and dove for it like a strongside linebacker. He landed face-first among the pick-up in the gutter. He stuck his hand into the hole, fishing around for a minute. Wide-eyed, he pulled it out. His face glowed with victory as he held it up to the sunlight, realizing—

It was actually a nickel.

Two-Bit cursed the cruel and sadistic universe in an unbroken string of oaths.

"_TGITTD, ya motherfucker!_" Soda squealed in the distance, waving his quarter in the air.

And Two-Bit smacked his head against the pavement.

* * *

><p>Later, Two-Bit came out of the phone booth knowing why it was really fucking called Torture Two-Bit Day.<p>

"Whoa—what's the matter?" Soda said. "What'd Kathy say?"

"Well, she said, uh, she said a few things." Two-Bit looked up, smiling. "That I'm a good-for-nothing piece of shit." Turning around, he lowered his eyes and inhaled. "That I'm no better than my old man." His smile widened; he laughed at the ground. "That I should just drop dead."

Soda's eyes widened. "Two-Bit—"

Two-Bit waved him away, fumbling absently around in his back pocket for a cigarette. "Nah, man, it's fine. It's fine. I don't care. It don't matter anyway." His lowered eyes brightened as his smile grew even wider in the orange light of the match. "If I go to war and get blown up, it ain't no different, right? If I stay here, I'll drop dead in about a couple a years. Nah. It don't matter, man...it don't matter."

"S-stop talking like that, Two-Bit," Sodapop said, his voice getting high. He slid off the hood with a stricken expression on his face, taking Two-Bit by the shoulder. "Shut up, man, just shut up about that_, _okay?"

"It's true," Two-Bit said, shrugging. "Dad left us high and fuckin' dry. I guess I ain't no better—"

"_Shut up!" _Soda shrilled.

"Look—we all gotta go sometime. In Kathy's case, it's sooner instead of later."

"Fuck her, man," Dally said suddenly, shooting up from his place against the hood. He pointed a confident finger at the ground. "You know what? Fuck alla' this, man. They don't need us. We don't need them. So fuck her. Fuck Darry. Shut up, Soda. Fuck Steve; fuck Pony; fuck J—" Dally's voice cracked. His face twisted slightly before he regained his composure. "J-just fuck them all—damn it—_damn it all—_"

He cupped his face in his palm.


	8. Good Buns Like These

The Plymouth seemed like it was in pitiful standing. Dallas winced and tried not to concentrate on the orange bar hovering dangerously close to the E. But it seemed like the old girl was falling apart every time he started her up. She coughed and spat when he jammed the key in the ignition. Sounded like something was rattling inside the engine.

Soda yawned. He'd insisted on getting breakfast—which was ordering a dozen sticky buns at a bakery. Dally had thrown his out the window; he'd go comatose if he so much as looked at that thing the wrong way. Soda had wolfed down three. He crossed his arms and wondered how the kid didn't OD on sugar.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty, hand me a sticky bun, willya?" Two-Bit said.

"Ooh, you wanna touch my sticky buns," Soda singsonged softly, rummaging around in a paper bag. When he found the right-sized pastry he tossed it into Two-Bit's lap. "I didn't know you went that way, Two-Bit."

Two-Bit grinned in kind. "Didn't know you let other guys touch your sticky buns."

Meanwhile, Dally had grown dangerously impatient. It had been two hours since they had left the bakery on 52nd Street, but the streets were so congested he had inched his slug of a car five yards. And the engine was sputtering. Soda was half-awake; Two-Bit was already wired on his second sticky bun of the morning. And he had missed out on his morning pack of Kools.

A morning pack of Kools made for a calm Dally. A calm Dally made for a calm day. Likewise, no morning pack of Kools made for an uncalm Dally.

An uncalm Dally made for mass destruction.

"Fuck this shit, man," he muttered. He jerked the stick shift back and picked up the thermos, announcing: "Attention dumbasses, this is your pilot speaking. We're experiencing a little turbulence right now. Please remember to strap your undies to your buttcheeks, as we're gonna be ripping up the road in about two seconds." He glanced at Two-Bit. "Unless, like some horn-dogs I know, you'd be better off forgetting the idea of undies altogether."

Two-Bit gave him a thumbs-up, then a middle finger, conveniently licking frost off his other thumb.

He merged into traffic only to run into more congestion.

"Aw, god DAMN!" he screamed. He slammed his hand on the horn; some protest arose from other commuters.

"Cap it, buddy!" a man in front of him shouted.

After trying the horn to no avail, Dally stuck his head out the window.

"_Red Rover, Red Rover, I'll run your dumb ass right over!"_

* * *

><p>Two hours later, Two-Bit, Soda, and Dally were sitting side-by-side in a dank prison cell bench.<p>

"Admit it," Dally said. His voice was the first to pierce the solid wall of ice between them. "That was some good fuckin' material right there."

"The fuzz sure don't find it funny," Soda said tiredly.

"Fuzz couldn't laugh shit out their buttholes if they had fuckin' diahrrea." He sighed. "Better put on my rain boots," he said, looking up, "'cause the bullshit is getting deep in here."

Soda stared at the wall.

"Uh-huh. Now pull the other one."

"Look, I already told them I was doing 35. Those other stiffs were the ones gumming up the fuckin' road."

"Liar, liar, pants on fire," Soda said.

Dally slapped him in the arm.

"Oh, shit," said Two-Bit, the wildfire of familiarity shooting down his spine. The phrase _liar, liar, pants on fire_ was forming subconscious connections in his brain, revealing a very important answer to a very important question.

"What?"

Two-Bit's head snapped up. "You know that one time I woke up in the middle of the West Side and never knew how in the hell I got there?"

"Yeah," Soda said.

"I think I remember why now."

A LONG TIME AGO

The Soc make-out spot. Two-Bit inched his broken-down Camaro close to the edge. He then flicked his headlights three times and slammed his hand down on the horn, releasing a screech into the air. When the wide-eyed victims looked up, he whooped ferally and stuck his head out the window.

"_Liar, liar, pants on fire_!" Two-Bit slurred, surprisingly in perfect rhythm. "_Hadda whore but couldn't buy her_!"

PRESENT TIME

Two-Bit blinked.

"You know, I'd always wondered how I woke up naked in the middle of four-way traffic," he said.

* * *

><p>Like a caged animal, Two-Bit shuffled around the perimeter of the prison cell. Sodapop and Dallas sat on a long bench chained to a concrete wall, where above them a blue square of light fell in strips atop their heads, rendering both blondes a whitish-green. The paper bag which Two-Bit had managed to smuggle in a secret pocket of his jacket divided Soda and Dally, filling the room with the soft, maddening scent of pastry.<p>

Then Two-Bit, suddenly getting a bright—or at least entertaining—idea, ceased his shuffling. He bunched up his shirttail and tied it in front of his stomach. He then pretended to strut his (nonexistent) stuff down the center of the cell. Dally lifted an eyebrow, but decided it was best to let idiots wander within their natural parameters, wisely lighting up a cigarette; Soda looked on Two-Bit with a mixture of amusement and caution.

Two-Bit turned around, swung his hips to the left and batted his eyelashes.

"Barter I could Elizabeth Taylor these stiffs?"

Dally cracked a grim smirk from behind his glowing filter. "Two-Bit, you couldn't flirt your way out of a goddamn paper bag."

"Then it's time to find you some better girls than paper bags, my friend," Two-Bit said half-assedly, grinning. Dally promptly reached into the paper bag and threw a sticky bun at his stomach. He grinned again and cupped his palms around two invisible places on his chest, shifting them. "You're just jealous 'cause _my_ bags are real."

"Oh God," Soda said, shielding his eyes as if anticipating a car crash.

Two-Bit untied his shirttail and squatted, studying the floor. He remained there until another brilliant idea struck his fancy. "Hey," he whispered, jerking a thumb behind him. "You cats really wanna drive the guard nuts?"

Dallas seemed stuck in a catatonic state, fixating on some crevice in the wall. Soda shrugged.

But that was all the approval he needed. He lifted a mischievous eyebrow, and announced in a loud voice: "Who wants a taste of my _sticky buns_?"

Dally rolled his eyes. Soda, catching on, grinned.

"No, Two-Bit, I don't wanna touch your _sticky buns_," he said, biting his bottom lip.

"Hey!" Two-Bit protested, his voice quavering and his face turning red from growing internalized laughing pressures. "My _sticky buns_ are fresh outa the oven, pal. They're soft and round and just _oozin'_ with that good old _hot sugar_... Don't you be talkin' bad about my_ sticky buns_."

"Fuck," said Soda, "_my_ buns are better than yours."

"Ha." Two-Bit snorted. "Your buns are as flat as a table."

Soda handed Two-Bit a few sticky buns from the bag. "Oh, so you wanna compare your buns to mine, is that it? My buns are old fashion home-baked. I got a sense of decency; I can take my buns home to Grandma. You got to strut around this cell flauntin' yours for a few bucks and a free ride, innit?"

"Hey, good buns like these don't come without no price tag, my friend," said Two-Bit. Then he clapped his hands together to simulate the sound of a stiff bitch-slap. "_Hey! Get your hands off my buns, you weirdo! You got to pay up first!"_

"Shut up! I'll do whatever the hell I want with your buns!" Soda shrieked, grinning like an idiot. A soft murmur began to radiate from the other cells.

_Sweet Lord Jesus have mercy on us_, Dally thought.

Soda licked the top of one of the pastries. "I'm licking your buns, Two-Bit! Got my tongue caught! What'cha gonna do about it?"

Two-Bit looked quite close to dying, holding up the two pastries Soda had given him. Tears streamed silently down his face; he could barely get the next sentence out.

"_Hey, man, I'll lick your buns if you lick mine._"

He was howling on the floor as the guard ran up to the cell.

"For the love of God, show some decency!" the thick-necked guard shrieked, rattling his nightstick across the bars. "We have to deal with enough sickos as it is."

Then he stopped, and blinked as he saw the pastries littered across the prison cell—Soda and Two-Bit had launched a massive sticky-bun war.

"Sorry—no buns bakin' in this oven, Officer," Dally said, smiling.

And, unable to form a coherent response to this, the guard stormed off.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued.<em>


	9. Nice Kitty

It had started with a chill. A prickling crawling under his skin warned him of the dangers to come. Yet he was so far enamored with sleep, he—

"Dally."

The voice dragged a long, rusty nail across his brain.

"Shuddup," came his drawled response. Thus Dally settled in the darkness again, slipping into the ether of dreams when—

"Dally," the voice persisted. "Come on, Dal. Wake up."

A poke in the ribs nudged him to the realm of the living.

Dally shot up; Two-Bit's worried countenance flooded his blurry vision. "_What_?"

"You gotta tell the guard the toilet's backing up," Two-Bit said.

"What? ...Shit." Dally decompressed, half-coherent, cold, crumpling and miserable, and mumbled: "Wasn't before."

Then he snapped awake...

...for a puddle had formed at his feet.

He scrambled against the wall. "SonovaBIT—"

"Shhh," Two-Bit said, pointing to Soda.

Dally's eyes followed the gleaming silver of Two-Bit's latest exploits. The nearby toilet had been stuffed with a piece of clothing—a dark piece of clothing—

He shivered again, the chill soaking his bones, and he realized the moron had used his blazer as toilet paper.

Two-Bit slammed the lid shut and looked down. Soda rolled over, slapped a hand to the water, murmured a question about lemonade and rolled onto his other side.

* * *

><p>"Busting out? Fuck that plan," Dally said. "I'm goin' t'bed. Good fuckin' night."<p>

Two-Bit laughed, assuming a scolding mother-hen voice. Which, for him, sounded faintly British. "What? What's that I hear? You want to stay here, in this dank prison cell? Dallas Nathaniel Winston! For _shame_!"

"Why? We ain't goin' nowhere."

"No, no, see, that's why I backed up the toilet," Two-Bit explained. "I'd tell 'em we hadda go; but don't worry, if that don't catch them, I got our ace right here." Fumbling with his back pocket, he flicked out his comb. The end of the comb had been whetted. With what, Dally could only guess. And studying the damage done by the water, he shuddered at the thought. "I was combin' back my hair, see, 'cause I don't like wakin' up with a rat's nest..." Grinning, he "dropped" the comb, which tinkled on the floor. "And...oops! Little bugger fell outside the cell." He knelt down, patting the floor. When he found the comb he stealthily jammed it in the keyhole and started picking around.

Ten minutes passed.

"Did better in the rehearsal, anyway," Two-Bit muttered. Dally rolled his eyes, glancing at the snoring Soda. He smiled grimly. That kid would sleep through Armageddon; Two-Bit couldn't fall asleep if they shot him up with a horse tranquilizer.

A click sounded, then the slight squeaking of hinges. Two-Bit smiled.

Then frowned—Dally had been holding the keys.

"Hey," he called out. Two-Bit whirled around. "Get your ass back in here."

Two-Bit blinked.

"What? Why?"

"It's too easy," he said.

"Too easy?" Two-Bit balked, straining to keep his voice at a harsh whisper. "Too _EASY_?"

"It ain't a good chase," Dally explained, twirling the ring of keys on his finger. "I've been in cradles with better security than this dump."

"Lookee here, you motherfucker," Two-Bit hissed, "I spent four hours last night figurin' out our escape plan, and I ain't about to let you undermine that stroke a' genius just because, accordin' to my fuckin' West Side Story cronie" —he assumed Dally's Brooklyn accent, because when he was madder than hell he had a tendency to assume strange accents— "_it's too easy_."

"Okay then, Napoleon," Dally shot back, "enlighten me."

"They changed the guard at midnight," Two-Bit said. "Graveyard shift. Motherfucker couldn't keep his eyes open if he taped his lids to his forehead." Dally nodded slightly, understanding what drivel had been mentioned thus far. "I backed up the toilet so he'll take us out. Then we _accidentally_ slip out when he takes us out to go, and if anybody asks us any questions, we say we're hitchhikers who got lost on the nature trails."

"Uh-huh." Dally smirked. "And what're we gonna say when they drag our sorry asses back?"

Two-Bit grinned, zipping up an area best left unspecified. "We tell 'em since they didn't fix the can, we been out _fly_ fishing."

Silence.

"Two-Bit, that has to be the most cracked, half-baked, idiotic plan I've ever had the misfortune of hearing." A few moments passed between them; Dallas smirked. "Let's do it."

* * *

><p>"Where we goin', Officers?" Soda mumbled as his buddies dragged his sleeping corpse along. A handful of stars sprinkled in a navy sky glittered and illuminated their heads with faint blue light. In the throes of twilight, the forest outside the prison sputtered and swayed and whistled with a cacophony of sound.<p>

Dally and Two-Bit shared a silent grin in the early darkness.

"Interrogation room," Two-Bit announced.

"Aw, shit," Soda mumbled. "Shoulda let Steve take the fall for that one... _Borrowing_ hubcaps my ass."

Dally cleared his throat and tried on his best white-collar voice. "This 'Steve' you're referring to is an accessory?"

"Dunno what that means... Steve likes shiny things."

They snickered as he trailed off to sleep again.

A crack sounded. The boys stopped laughing and listened; the silence was filled only by the breeze and Soda's light breathing.

Too used to danger of this caliber, Dally's eyes narrowed.

"What was that?"

"Aw, nothin'," —Two-Bit snapped his head back— "it's just a cat."

"How you know it's just a cat?"

"It's a cat," Two-Bit said simply, smiling. Dally frowned, failing to follow his train of thought. He believed it mistaken to think Two-Bit had _any_ train of thought. "You afraid of a little cat?"

"No."

Two-Bit meowed and Dally's palm missed his head by an inch.

Dallas sighed. "Shit, whaddya doing now?"

Two-Bit had left Soda to inspect a nearby bush.

"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," he called, patting his thighs. Dally's left eyelid began to twitch. If he killed himself, maybe he could end this nonsense and wake up to a more rational world. Namely, a deserted island. "Nice kitty. _Nice_ kitty."

A crackle sounded in the bush, and Two-Bit jumped back.

"Whoa!"

Dally crossed his arms, sensing something.

"Hey," he said. "That ain't no cat, Two-Bit."

"Nice kitty," Two-Bit persisted, cooing, kneeling around the backside of the bush. "_Nice_ kitty." The creature scuttled by, rattling the brush, and like a snake poised to kill he seized it. "_Gotcha_!"

Then he shot straight up, frozen.

Dally snorted.

"What?"

Spinning around, he looked at Dally, eyes wide. "Oh, shit, Dally, she's a real big mad one—"

"What the hell are you talking abou—oh God, what is _that_?"

Dally's cry dried up as he spit on the ground, choking down the bile that flooded his throat. A massive stench erupted from the animal and filled the air, sharp and acrid. He couldn't wipe the water welling from the corners of his eyes fast enough, but even so he could see Two-Bit's face turning red.

"_That's no fuckin' cat!" _he half-screeched.

Two-Bit was clearly resisting the urge to retch, tightening his grip on the animal. "Come on, man, I can't hold onta this thing forever."

"_What?"_

Two-Bit sighed.

Dally blinked, realizing something great and grave. Vehemently he shook his head, instantly preferring prison. "No. No, no, no, no. No, you ain't thinking of—you're outa your damn mind, you fool—_don't you be swingin' that furry ass at me!" _

Thus marked the first time the great Dallas Winston had ever feared for someone else's sanity.

"They're gonna send the hounds to sniff us out," Two-Bit said matter-of-factly. "You know that."

Dally began backing away. No blade, pool stick, or heater could have seen him backing into the forests as it had right now.

"No."

"Come on, Dally. Just a" —Two-Bit retched slightly, his fortification cracking, swallowing down a broken grin— "a little spritz, and you'll be done. Just one. That's all. Like perfume." He petted the skunk innocently, adding lowly: "Namely the kind Sylvia wears."

Dally raised his fist to punch Two-Bit, but stopped mid-motion when he held up the poor animal's raised rump in a pathetic attempt at self-defense.

"You watch yourself now, I - I gotta deadly weapon," Two-Bit stammered. "One more step, and the Kitty shoots." Feigning fear, Dally squirmed. "Yeah, you just watch it now. One good shake'a this thing, and the whole goddamn country smells like a Cajun's ass on beans and rice."

"Oh, well, since you put it that way..." Dally's icy glare returned to his face. "_No_."

Two-Bit shrugged. "We gotta throw off our scent somehow. It's either this or eatin' our own shit. Now stand still, willya? Kitty here's gonna make you good and _stinky_."

"You can't be fuckin' serious. I'd rather eat my own sh—AGGH!" he screamed, and shielded himself as he was sprayed. "COULDN'T YOU AT LEAST WAIT FOR ME TO COVER MY GODDAMN EYES?"

Two-Bit winced, then quickly recovered, having been entirely on the skunk's good end. "Oh, come on, you pansy, it can't be _that_ bad."

Raging, Dally coughed an endless string of broken oaths. He wiped at his eyes, stumbled backwards, tripped and fell on his haunches with a solid thud, curling up into a writhing ball of self-protection. The whole scene faintly reminded Two-Bit of the time they played baseball and he took a foul ball to the happy parts...

Because Dally never played baseball again.

Sodapop coughed awake, yanking his collar over his nose. "_Whoo-ee_! Who ate the last can of beans?"

Two-Bit pointed at Dally; Dally let out a dark grin.

"Okay, Two-Bit." He swallowed down a choke. "Your turn now."

Nodding, Two-Bit turned around and set the animal on the ground, where it scampered off into the forest.

Dally blinked, opening his mouth and shutting it for a few moments. When he regained what was left of his sanity he smacked his friend upside the head.

"_What the hell_?"

"Don't worry." Two-Bit let out a tiny smile. Some pinpoint fire glittered in his grey eyes, and it sure wasn't from the sun. "Me and Soda'll follow your scent."

"What're you..." Dally blinked, his eyes widening. "...saying..."

Two-Bit smiled slowly, straightening his smile at the corners as Dally's mind clicked, like the Chesire cat who smiled at Alice's stupidity.

"Come on," he coaxed. "You know this one."

"Two-Bit, you're higher than the fuckin' Empire State building, ain't you?" Why hadn't he asked that sooner? That was the first question you ever asked Two-Bit Mathews. It preceded all other questions. Even before _What's your name? _"Why do I even listen to you? They're gonna sniff us out faster than the hounds."

"Nope!" His friend blew a raspberry right in his face. "Wrong! And let's see what you lost...the $64,000! Oh, well, let's see the consolation prize." He joyously shook his head. "They ain't got no hounds, Dal. Ain't no dog in miles of here. I just wanted to see if you'd buy that bullshit story."

Silence reigned.

Slowly, Two-Bit grinned again.

"Admit it, Dally. _I'm_ the king," he said finally. He turned around and, winking, slapped his derriere. "Four hours of plannin' and plottin'. Easy escape _my ass._"

As he laughed, Dallas stared him down, his nostrils flattening and his upper lip twitching.

To lose a mind is a terrible thing indeed.

"Let's get goin', huh? Betcha they're not gonna be too happy about that toilet thing," beamed Two-Bit, those sweet few moments of vengeance already forgotten. Dally watched him in a dreamlike ether as he smiled and patted his face. Then the happy greaser bent over, picked a dandelion, flicked off the head, stuck the stem into a corner of his mouth and began traipsing joyously into the forest, whistling the theme to "The Andy Griffith Show."

Soda looked up at the wide-eyed Dally; then, assessing the pressure as critical mass, he ducked, tucked his head into his knees, squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears. Like they'd taught them to do at school in the case of nuclear explosion.

And he waited for Armageddon.

Three. Two. One—

"_Not if you're cold and dead, you sorry sonovabitch!"_

The cry rang out in the depths of the great forest: _...bitch...itch...itch..._

Two-Bit thought about making some sly crack about Sylvia's cleanliness and Dally seeing a doctor about that, but instead grinned to himself and most wisely decided to run like the devil was on his heels.

_Hell hath no fury like a skunked Winston_, he thought before ducking a rock to the head. _But it sure right is funny to watch._

* * *

><p><em>To be continued.<em>


	10. Cowboy, George, and Dick Winterschmidt

Nature called ... at four in the morning, unfortunately.

Freezing his balls off out here, he thought.

Two-Bit blinked his eyes open, and saw smoke.

Smoke ... ?

He followed the column of silver; he followed it to a small thatched house on the shore of a lake.

"Hot damn," he said. "Looks like we won't hafta eat each other after all."

He ran back just in time to overhear his buddies arguing. Vehemently. But his heart pounded so furiously with excitement he couldn't register it.

"You wanna do me a favor and get lost?" Dallas asked. "You were higher than a fuckin' kite! Man, even I got more sense than you; you'll prolly be seein' bugs crawlin' up your arms and shit."

"I'm tellin' ya, I ain't high!" Soda shouted.

"_Hey! I found a house!_ _I found a house over the h—_wait, what?" Two-Bit stopped his jog to stare at Soda. "You were _stoned_? When?"

"All this time," Dally said, folding his arms." It's a fuckin' wonder I didn't get pulled over for possession." He sized Soda up, smirking. "So, you think Darry'll stake his head up on a picket fence, or he'll use the old-fashioned guillotine instead?"

"Darry ain't here, you stupid motherfucker, so shut up!"

Dally clapped his hands to his mouth, rolling his eyes to the back of his head and feigning injury. "Ooh, druggie has claws."

"I ain't a damn druggie, okay? Just drop it."

* * *

><p>When they got down to the house, Dallas punched Two-Bit in the shoulder.<p>

"You _idiot_!" he hissed. "This is a _hippie house_! Can't you see all the smoke that's coming out the windows?"

"Looks like a good time," Two-Bit said absently, reaching out to knock on the door. Dally smacked the bottom of his palm against his forehead. Like talking to a _brick wall_ ...

Soda crossed his arms, rubbing them. He could start to feel the insides of his eyelids freeze together. "Hey, Two-Bit, if you're gonna tell them our names, gimme a tuff name, man. I don't feel like explainin' it t'all these hippies right now."

"Okay."

Dally seized Two-Bit's arm and hissed in his ear: "I swear, if you say I'm Dick Clark again, you're gonna wake up wearing your ass as a hat."

He freed his arm, waving his buddy off. "With all that fur on yours, I bet you'd keep real warm." And he pounded on the door before Dally could grab him again.

"Ah! What visitors does the world bring us today?" a voice sang from the other side.

"If he just said what I thought he said, I may have to kill myself," Dally said lowly. "Right now."

The door had wooden hinges and took the caller five minutes to pry the ancient thing open.

"Howdy," Two-Bit said. "Hate to be a bother, but we're looking for a place to stay."

"No," said the man quietly. His eyes darted between the three. "You ain't with the Fed, are you?"

Two-Bit blinked.

"No."

"Oh," the man said. "Then of course you can stay. Come in. Sit down." Talk about a dump, Dally thought. Somebody had chopped up a transistor radio for firewood. "My name is Starshine, and these are my friends," he said. Dally groaned on the inside. "What brings you here to our humble home?"

"We're ... traveling together." Two-Bit looked at Soda. "This is ... Dick." He winced in preparation. "Dick Winterschmidt."

Soda squinted.

"The third." Two-Bit leaned towards Starshine and whispered, "He gets real picky about that kinda shit."

"I see. And your other friend?"

Two-Bit looked uneasily at Dally, who smiled coldly. "Him? Oh, that's George ... George ... Thompson ... George Thompson ..._ Major_ George Thompson ... He was with the Navy Seals." The room went wide-eyed, to which Two-Bit added: "You know, where they honk the horns and they clap their fins and you give 'em a fish and all that."

Dallas's smile dissolved.

Two-Bit pointed to himself. "And I'm—"

"You caught him. His name's Dallas Winston, but everyone calls him Cowboy," Dally cut in, a smirk playing on his lips. Two-Bit felt a pang of ice shoot down his spine. He knew that smirk too well. "He hustles people in pool games and spends all his time getting knocked on his ass in rodeos. He ain't got no home 'cause he sleeps on park benches and shit—he was a runaway from Brooklyn. Part of a gang. What was it called, Cowboy?" Dally smiled tightly. "Oh yeah, I remember now—the Gunslingers. One'a them pummeled him for money, so he decided to make a little migration. Stole all his momma's diamonds and went to Tulsa three years later, where his old man lived." Two-Bit grew wide-eyed. _Write a novel while you're at it, Dal?_ God damn. Was he ... was he _enjoying_ this? "When he was sixteen, his old man kicked him outta the house for sleepin' with his girlfriend." He folded his arms and glared slightly at the wall. "Lyin' little golddigger wasn't a fuckin' day over seventeen, either."

"Did I tell you cats that Georgie here cusses like a sailor?"

"I can get away with it 'cause I _am_ a sailor, you ignoramus," Dallas spat. He nodded at the crowd. "One time, Cowboy broke the school windows and I had to take the blame, with him having a record that reaches to China and all that."

A fifteen-year old with black hair running down to the small of his back called out: "Hey, I thought you was with the Navy Seals, man."

"That was a long time ago, when we were little shits. Now we're big shits." Dally glanced sadly at Two-Bit, shaking his head. "Cowboy's a wino. Real sad. I give 'im money, y'know, to help him up on his feet, but he blows it all on booze and broads." Two-Bit looked close to blowing. "But he can crack a real funny joke every now and then. I guess that's why I keep 'im around."

His buddy blinked. This was certainly a strange day.

"I retired a few years ago," Dally continued. "I got a nice boat and painted it blue, but during a trip to Greece my navigator crashed the hull against some rocks, and it sank off the coast of the Mediterranean." Soda's ears burned hearing the stream of lies with which Dally effortlessly wove his tale as George the Sailor. How in the sufferin' _hell_ could he lie like that? "I was stuck in Greece for a little while, hitchhiked 'round Europe, you know, stuff like that. Went to the US Embassy, they sent me home."

"To Oklahoma, right?" another hippie called out.

"Yeah. Nothin' like Greece, though. Corn fields, corn fields, corn fields." Their incredulous stares were pure gold. There wasn't a corn field within three miles of Tulsa.

"How'd you end up here, man?"

Dally scratched his head. "We were actually goin' to Mexico, but I guess we went the wrong way."

"Yeah, that happened to me once," the hippie said, nodding sadly. "I was holdin' the map upside down."

* * *

><p>"So this is our room, huh?" Two-Bit sat down in a beanbag chair, which promptly deflated.<p>

Soda looked uneasy. "Uh, there's—there's a boy sleeping under the rafters."

"Good. You'll be right at home, then," Dally said. "You'll have all the space you need to rip it up."

"For the last goddamn time, I ain't no—"

Soda stopped midsentence as a naked woman emerged from a room on down the hall. She glided silently past their open door, not seeming to mind their greedy stares or hanging jaws. Two-Bit slapped himself to make sure he wasn't really stuck in a dream.

"Nah, boys, now that I think about it," Dally said, grinning, "I think we'll all fit in just fine."

* * *

><p>"You kids hungry?" Two-Bit rolled over on the floor under the haze of smoke that had wafted upstairs. "'Cause I'm hungry as hell."<p>

"Fuck yeah." Dally laid his head back against the wall, blowing out a sigh. "Fuckin' starving over here."

Two-Bit plunged a hand in his pockets and began rummaging around, mumbling, "Where's those sticky buns?"

Suddenly sharing a thought, Dally and Two-Bit shot a look at Soda at the same time.

"Whuh ... ? Oh, uh, yeah," he stammered drowsily. "I, uh ... I ate the last one."

Dally pushed a hand through his hair. Must've been something in the air—his insides felt so mellow that he couldn't even muster the energy to get up and smack the damn stoner.

"Great," he sighed, "leave it to McStoned over here to eat the last one."

Soda shrugged.

"Look," Two-Bit said, lighting what he thought was a Cuban cigar, "this place's got enough gardens to feed all the starvin' little kids in China. We'll just sneak into the kitchen, grab a few things, and split."

* * *

><p>The three boys stood in front of the cabinets, looking like they'd found the Promised Land.<p>

"We need somethin' to drink," Two-Bit said.

And so it began.

The three scattered among the kitchen. Cabinet doors flew open; pots and pans were thrown about the kitchen in a clatter.

"And somethin' to eat, too," Dal said. "We need this shit to _live_, you know!"

"And some bread and jelly and pickles," Soda said.

"And the fuckin' sugar," Dally said, tossing more items into the burlap sacks they'd smuggled from another room. Opening a jar full of sugar, he let the sweet substance pour into his mouth, not caring that most of it had gotten on the floor. When it was emptied of all its contents, he tossed it out the window.

Two-Bit cleared the tables of anything that appeared remotely edible, stuffing them into his jacket and pants pockets.

"And some of this, and some of this, and some ... some ... ah hell, I'll figure out what it is later."

Dally, meanwhile, proceeded to fanatically knock down all the spices from the cabinets, stuffing them in his jacket pockets. "And oregano! Got no fuckin' clue what it does but I bet it's goddamn fuckin' _delicious_!"

When the chaos settled, however, and they were certain they'd be fat with satisfaction, they stared at their pathetic pile.

Dallas and Soda nearly wanted to cry.

"_This ain't enough_!" Two-Bit half-screamed, kicking the burlap sacks away. "Fuck this shit, man, you know what I could really go for?"

"What?"

"A fucking hamburger, man," he said with awe. "You know, a _real_ hamburger, and not just one of those dinky little ones they give you at McDonald's. I want me a fuckin' cow, man, I wanna fucking cattle herd! And I want it to be so juicy it fuckin' _mooes_ at me!"

The hippie kid with black hair was making his way towards the kitchen; Two-Bit yanked his buddies out into the hall, calling out: "Hey, kid! You know where we can find a Dairy Queen's in this joint?"

The hippie blinked.

"What for?"

"We wanna have lunch; we're fucking starvin'."

"Oh," yawned the hippie kid. "Well, you don't have to do that; I could make you some pumpkin soup or something—"

"_No_," Two-Bit said in a voice so low Dally briefly thought the Devil was coming out of him. "Not that. I need ... somethin' heartier. You got somethin' heartier?"

"What? Like potato soup?"

"No," Two-Bit's smile was starting to scare the bejesus out of him, Dally thought. His eyes tended to bug out of his head when he was hungry. "You're mishearing me, kid—_heartier_."

"I don't feel you, man."

Two-Bit smile stretched to crazy-serial-killer proportions. "That's right. That's right. You don't feel me. Lemme clear it up for ya." His cheery stare could have melted stone as he pointed outside, then lifted up his shirt and pointed to his stomach. "I need some _dead meat_ in _this_ stomach right _now_."

The hippie looked uneasy. He held up a glass bottle with amber liquid in it. "Uh, no, sorry, we don't have any of that ... how 'bout some mead?"

"The hell is that?" Dally demanded, eyeing the bottle with certain interest.

"Mead," the hippie repeated, relieved to look at someone other than a ravashed Two-Bit. "The monks of England first invented it. It's normally a mixture of honey and rose peta—"

"Yeah, yeah, peace and doves, make love not war, Richard Nixon's the Antichrist. Now gimme some of that shit," Dally said, snatching the bottle from his hand. He swilled it down; a moment later he broke the lid of the vessel from his lips, his eyes flown wide open, coughing and sputtering. "The _fuck_? _This stuff tastes like piss_!"

"That's 'cause honey_ is_ bee piss, you stupid sailor," Soda said.

"No, there's no honey in our mead," said the hippie kid calmly. Two-Bit squinted in confusion. No one in their right mind was calm if they pissed off Dallas Winston. He shrugged. Unless they were stoned. Then the playing field was just about even. "We never take anything from animals we can grow or make ourselves."

"So ..." Soda said, "... it actually is ..."

"The cleanest liquid on earth, my brothers," he beamed. Dallas' eyes grew flat with horror; his hand went right to his throat in the universal choking sign. "Hey, don't be that way, man. You go to the city, that water you're drinkin' isn't much different than the sewage lines they got sloshing around it."

Dally retched, staggering forward, preparing to leap forth and die.

Two-Bit smiled politely, stepping aside so Dally could rush outside and let it all out.

"You know, now I think I've seen it all," he said, clapping the confused hippie kid on the shoulder. "You got that shit to go?"

"_Oh, shit, the Feds are here_!" Starshine shouted, bursting into the hall. "They got us! Hide the stash, man, hide it!"

"What? Where?"

"In the corn fields, man!" He dove behind the couch as a boom shook the front door; then screaming and commands morphed into chaos.

* * *

><p>Five minutes later found them lined up against a police cruiser with their hands over their heads. An arresting officer was reading the hippie his Miranda rights. In monotone.<p>

Dally considered simply asking one of the officers to take him out of his misery.

"False alarm, Frederick," one of the officers called out.

"It's users like you that make the world a ... " The arresting officer blinked. "Wait, what?"

The officer pulled out the contents of the bag.

"Seaweed," he said.

A clink of handcuffs sounded as the three greasers stared incredulously at Starshine.

"Seaweed? All this time ... y'all been smokin'... seaweed. And you're growing ... seaweed." Dally wiped his mouth, trying not to blow. "In the middle of a _corn field_."

"They're watered with the tears of Mother Earth, man," Starshine said before being promptly slammed into the cruiser. "With the fuckin' tears of _Mother Earth_!"

* * *

><p>"You really wanna go to Greece, Dal?"<p>

Dally snapped awake. "What? No. Fuck no."

"Then how the helld'ya make up that shit-story about crashing your boat in the Mediterranean?"

"I've got sources," Dally said sharply.

"But you—"

"_Sources_, baby."

Silence. Two-Bit sighed as he stared at his reflection in the window. He'd seen the insides of a police car or two in his day, but never for the purpose of getting a friendly ride.

"Will we ever get home?" Soda said finally. "I mean, we can't keep running forever."

"Here's what we'll do," Dally said. "The first place we land, we'll get a job. When we get enough money we'll go back to Tulsa." He gestured a straight path in front of him. "No more shit."

Two-Bit snapped his head around.

"Don't look at me like that, you asshole," Dally said, leaning in to hiss in his face. "Yes, I said it. A _job_. _Work_. Something you_ do_ besides getting stoned all day and watching Mission Impossible reruns."

"Man, I'd go with that plan," Soda mumbled. "Least I know how to work."

Two-Bit blinked in the following silence, thinking, then said: "You miss Darry?"

"Maybe," he sighed, watching his reflection melt in the night. "But I'm starting to miss his cooking."

* * *

><p><em>To be continued.<em>


End file.
